Have you ever been in a situation where a loved one had an incurable disease? I have. As AbleGamers, let’s forget about ourselves for a moment and just think of others. We probably know someone personally affected by cancer of some sort, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy, Fibromyalgia, this, that, and the other thing.

We sit idly being able to do nothing but wait, raise funds, awareness, and try and be there for the people that need us. We all know the song and dance a little too well. Nier will hit close to home.

I didn’t know anything about the story prior to my adding it to my Gamefly GameQ. I’m not really the type of person to read what a game is about before playing it – I pretty much just play the game if for whatever reason; maybe I’ve heard it’s a pretty okay game or the cover of the game looks good to me. Had I known what Nier was about, I would not have started playing it.

Once I had put it in my XBOX, based on that instant connection I had with the story, it was over for me. I had to see it through to the end.

But before I get to the end, let’s talk accessibility…

Initially going through Nier, I was all set to call this the most accessible game I’ve played in the course of my paying attention to accessibility. The subtitles and captioning in Nier is probably the best I’ve seen in any game… and it’s all default! No having to go in and mess with the options. That’s a positive that doesn’t detract from the game at all.

Thinking about it, I don’t think calling some of the dialogue in the game subtitling or captioning is really fair. It’s something different. Let’s go with "in-game telepathy".

When you’re talking to someone, telepathy is how all the conversations take place with letter-boxing at the bottom of the screen, but it goes down more like a play than anything. For example if Nier is the one speaking, the font will start out "Nier:" then he’ll speak his piece. If the other party is speaking, the font will begin with their name followed by a colon and then they’ll speak their piece. To make things better, the text appears line by line, and to see the next line of text, you have to hit the A-button to see it.

I read relatively slowly, so this was perfect for me.

In certain situations, the telepathy moves from a 3D plain to a really cool 2D/3D, which I thought reminded me of looking at a painting on the wall.

Now the actual captioning takes place when you’re just running around Nier’s semi-open world. The text appears in the upper left hand corner of the screen, still white font on a black background. Unfortunately it’s real-time audio to text captioning.

Let’s move back to these 2D/3D environments for a second. If you go into a place like the pub, or your daughter’s room where conversation is a possibility, you’re presented with a screen that looks a lot like a painting as I said before. In some situations, combat takes place on a 2D/3D plain from an overhead perspective. It’s all really cool and a little different.

Now that we’ve got the subtitles taken care of, let’s talk menus, and the only thing to say about the menus is that they are very clear and easy to read.

Continuing on with the visuals, I had no problem seeing any part of Nier. There is a lot of green to look at, but not much of that plays with red. There’s a little dirt and grass interplay, but the colors melting together wasn’t a problem for me, and hopefully if someone were to be more colorblind than I am, they wouldn’t see a problem with it either.

Visuals beyond that are pretty on par with any other action RPG. Projectile magic attacks took a little getting used to, but not to a problematic extent.

Even though the melee combat could fall in line with being considered button-mashing, it wasn’t too bad. Hitting the X-button four times in rapid succession seemed to be the most I had to do to take down an enemy which is a real positive for those of us with motor disabilities.

All of that shiny, happy goodness fell apart for me when it came time to collect one Shaman Fish because it’s believed to help Nier’s Daughter. You don’t get let off the hook by simply paying a visit to a fish monger; you need to pay a visit to a fisherman.

This fisherman isn’t the type to simply accept payment for catching you a fish so that you can be on your merry way, he’s of the opinion that if you "give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you’ll feed him for a lifetime", but that’s not all, if you go through the process in any way at all, the fisherman will sweeten an already bitter deal by giving you a the rod and bait absolutely free…

…And then the game falls apart. Fishing is just too hard. Even if you do like I did and restart the game, go to the options and start from scratch on easy. Here’s how it goes down – you start by getting real close and personal with the water, you cast your lane and wait for a bite. Once your line is tugged, you hit a button and the battle begins.

In order to fish correctly, you’ve got to pull on in the exact opposite direction the fish is pulling, and you don’t have a whole lot of time to pull in the opposite direction of the fish. You’ve practically got to be intuitive. If you wait a split second too long, you’ve lost the fish which makes your book tell you that you should probably pull your stick in the opposite direction the fish is pulling. Sounds like a tiresome affair, doesn’t it?

Nier makes fishing slightly worse. You’ll have to position yourself just right to be able to see your rod so you can see when it’s tugged on.

I tried to get past it, but I just couldn’t. I sank probably twelve hours into Nier – six on normal difficulty and another six on easy. Who responsible for Nier has ever heard of a "fail-safe"? I’d really like to know the answer to that question. That’s almost a question every single person involved in the creation of a video game needs to answer.

If a game is going to be made in which there’s the slightest possibility of emotional investment, there should be at least some kind of way for everyone that plays said game to finish it. No one likes feeling helpless in real life, just as no one should be made to feel helpless in a virtual life. I feel robbed by this game, and of each and every time I’ve tried writing this review, this is the least whiny of its incarnations.

At A Glance

Hearing: 9.5/10
While no game is perfect, Nier comes as close as possible to being perfect as a game can be. It would have been nice to be able to go to the pause menu and look at the dialogue which had already taken place to see if the player missed something. All games going forward could learn something from Nier.

Visual: 7/10
Nier is a fairly average action RPG. It’s pretty easy to see the game for the most part which would put it at a little higher score, but the library is a little visually confusing, the map isn’t as high-contrast as I feel it should have been, and having to accommodate myself while fishing was just enough to put it right back down.

Mobility: 1/10
When I have to call someone who does not have a motor impairment to get me passed a certain event in a game… that’s enough to get a score of 5/10. When the person I call can’t get me beyond that same point, the game is an out and out failure. The only reason the game even gets a whole number score for mobility is due to the non-fishing controls being easy to keep up with.

Overall: 5.8/10